Energy & Power, Heating, Cooling & Drying

Deep Water Blue’s vSteam Protects Critical Steam Boiler at VPK Packaging

Phil Black - PII Editor 12 minutes ago

27 6 minutes read

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At VPK Packaging’s corrugated packaging plant in Wellington, Somerset, a single horizontal three pass fire tube boiler provides the steam that powers a high volume corrugator operating 24 hours a day, five days a week, with additional weekend production during peak demand.

Steam is essential throughout the manufacturing process, supplying heat to preheaters, corrugating rolls, steam showers and starch mixers. Any interruption to steam generation would immediately halt production, affecting VPK Packaging’s ability to supply customers across South Wales, the South West and the South of England from this strategically important manufacturing site.

As VPK Packaging’s Corrugator Engineer Gregory Pow explains:

“Uptime is everything on a corrugator, so the boiler simply has to keep running.“

With steam boiler reliability playing such a vital role in continuous production, maintaining optimum boiler water treatment and ensuring long term asset protection became a business-critical priority.

From catastrophic boiler failure to long term steam boiler reliability

Before working with Deep Water Blue, VPK Packaging’s original boiler at its Wellington facility experienced repeated tube failures before eventually suffering catastrophic damage caused by caustic embrittlement.

Although monthly water treatment reports from a previous supplier appeared acceptable, responsibility for daily testing rested with corrugator operators, who recorded results inconsistently. This meant periods where pH drifted outside safe operating limits went unnoticed, allowing damaging conditions to develop over time.

By the fifth year of operation, non destructive testing revealed extensive cracking around the burner tube and tube plates. The damage was so severe that the boiler was considered beyond economic repair, forcing VPK Packaging to operate using a hired boiler for approximately nine months while a permanent replacement was sourced and installed.

The experience highlighted the significant risks associated with inadequate steam boiler water treatment and reinforced the importance of consistent monitoring, accurate testing and specialist support.

Choosing a specialist in steam boiler water treatment

When investing in a replacement fire tube boiler, VPK Packaging deliberately chose a specialist in steam boiler water treatment rather than a general water treatment provider.

Alongside putting Gregory through BOAS training, the company partnered with Deep Water Blue, whose steam boiler water treatment specialists carried out a detailed assessment of the boiler house, condensate recovery system and overall compliance requirements.

Gregory explains that Deep Water Blue’s active involvement in UK boiler guidance through the Combustion Engineering Association gave VPK Packaging confidence that its recommendations would align with BG01 guidance and UK legislation rather than relying on broader European standards.

Commenting for Deep Water Blue, water treatment specialist George Nixon explains:

“We focus on steam plant from the ground up, which allows us to design chemistry, testing and digital oversight around each boiler’s risk profile and duty, not around a generic template.”

This specialist approach ensured that every aspect of the treatment programme was tailored to the operating conditions and risk profile of the Wellington facility.

Improving daily steam boiler management with vSteam

Deep Water Blue replaced the previous single pot amine treatment with a three component dosing programme designed specifically for the site’s steam boiler, condensate recovery system and reliable sulphite control.

Gregory and his team now follow a disciplined daily routine involving comprehensive water testing, visual inspections, boiler blowdowns and evaporation testing. Every result is logged within Deep Water Blue’s vSteam digital boiler management platform, creating a complete operational record of water quality, chemical adjustments and maintenance observations.

Gregory says:

“I particularly value the ability to review ten day trends at a glance, check that auto blowdown aligns with manual TDS readings and spot issues such as falling sulphite well before they threaten asset integrity.”

He also explains that during planned weekend shutdowns the engineering team uses trend data collected within vSteam to optimise dosing pump settings, ensuring the boiler maintains protective sulphite levels during unattended periods while avoiding unnecessary chemical consumption.

George Nixon comments:

“We designed vSteam to make detailed boiler testing feel manageable, giving engineers instant visibility of trends and the context behind every reading so that small deviations never snowball into big failures.“

The digital platform has become an important part of VPK Packaging’s preventative maintenance strategy, helping engineers identify developing issues before they become operational problems.

Managing the challenges of a high efficiency condensate recovery system

VPK Packaging’s condensate recovery system provides significant operational benefits while also introducing unique water treatment challenges.

Thanks to the installed Baviera system, large volumes of clean condensate are returned to the boiler, reducing make up water demand to approximately 20 cubic metres per week during a seven day firing schedule. While this improves efficiency and reduces water consumption, it also dilutes oxygen scavengers and other treatment chemicals.

Working closely with Deep Water Blue, VPK Packaging introduced an additional oxygen scavenger dosing point linked directly to the condensate recovery system’s pump speed. This allows chemical dosing to automatically adjust in line with condensate flow, maintaining consistent protection regardless of production rates.

This collaborative engineering approach contrasts sharply with Gregory’s previous experiences, where acceptable snapshot test results often concealed unstable operating conditions.

He believes the close cooperation between Deep Water Blue, the condensate recovery system manufacturer and the steam boiler OEM has also delivered valuable knowledge that can be applied across other VPK Packaging facilities operating similar condensate recovery systems.

Significant improvements in boiler reliability and steam system performance

Since implementing Deep Water Blue’s specialist water treatment programme and adopting the vSteam platform, VPK Packaging has experienced a dramatic improvement in steam boiler reliability.

During the six years following installation of the replacement boiler, the only significant issue encountered has been a manufacturing related weld defect on the feedwater inlet. The issue was unrelated to water treatment and was successfully resolved by rewelding a tube.

Gregory reports that the current boiler has experienced no tube failures whatsoever, describing the difference compared with the previous installation as:

“night and day.”

The improvements extend well beyond the boiler itself.

Historically, the Wellington facility regularly experienced gasket failures and steam leaks around the preheaters, often requiring repairs every four to six weeks.

Gregory explains:

“Since partnering with Deep Water Blue, those leaks have almost disappeared.”

He now struggles to remember the last steam leak requiring repair, estimating that three to four months or more typically pass between incidents.

Chemical consumption has also become more stable. Deep Water Blue has refined sulphite dosing levels to maintain sufficient protection throughout unattended weekends while keeping chemical pump outputs low and avoiding unnecessary usage.

According to George Nixon, Deep Water Blue focuses on achieving the correct balance between protection and efficiency, allowing customers such as VPK Packaging to use chemicals more effectively while carrying out more frequent and comprehensive testing.

Strengthening boiler compliance and changing attitudes towards water treatment

The combination of BOAS trained personnel, specialist technical support from Deep Water Blue and the comprehensive digital audit trail provided by vSteam has fundamentally changed how VPK Packaging approaches steam boiler compliance and operational risk.

Gregory explains:

“Many industrial sites still underestimate water treatment, only discovering its importance when everything has stopped, it is all going wrong and regulators arrive to investigate. My experience of a five year-old boiler failing through caustic embrittlement has made me acutely aware that cutting corners on treatment or switching to cheaper suppliers can carry a far higher long term cost.”

His experience has made him a strong advocate for maintaining specialist support.

Gregory now openly challenges any suggestion of changing water treatment providers.

“Once you develop the trust that we have with Deep Water Blue, it is very hard to trust anyone else.”

He highlights the extensive telephone support, shared technical documentation and collaborative problem solving provided by Deep Water Blue’s engineers, particularly during the commissioning and early operating years of the replacement boiler.

Gregory also stresses that:

“Given variations in local water quality, plant design and duty, water treatment and boiler care must remain site specific rather than being standardised across sites or even countries.”

Protecting critical steam plant for the long term

For manufacturers that depend on uninterrupted steam generation, effective steam boiler water treatment is far more than a maintenance task. It is a key part of operational resilience, regulatory compliance and asset protection.

By combining specialist chemistry, disciplined testing procedures, BOAS best practice and the digital oversight provided by vSteam, Deep Water Blue has helped transform VPK Packaging’s Wellington boiler house from one marked by catastrophic failure into a reliable and highly monitored steam generation system.

As George Nixon summarises:

“Deep Water Blue’s role at VPK Packaging’s Wellington site is to protect a single, critical boiler that underpins a strategically important corrugated plant, using detailed chemistry, disciplined testing and vSteam oversight to turn a painful past failure into a stable, confident future.”